The kingpin of the Delhi-based drug racket Dev Behl arrested by the Patiala police was an alleged associate of Dawood Ibrahim and his brother Anees in gold smuggling. According to the police,further investigations into the Delhi-based multi-crore international synthetic drug racket have also revealed the staggering volumes of precursor chemicals and synthetic drugs smuggled by the racketeers which are worth over Rs.2000 crores in the international market.

According to Hardayal Singh Mann,SSP,Patiala,Dev Behl,the alleged kingpin in the drug racket,was in his 50s and started his criminal career in the early 1980s. For five years from 1983 to 1988,he was operating an international gold smuggling syndicate along with Anees,on the directions of Dawood Ibrahim. Mann said that Behl said that he had met Anees and Dawood many times during the course of the gold smuggling racket. He maintained social contact with Dawood Ibrahim even after their partnership broke in 1988. Behl is said to have even gone to Dubai to meet Dawood. This gold smuggling racket was operated on a massive scale with 8 to10 kg of gold being smuggled on a monthly basis,he added.

The SSP said that during interrogation Dev Behl has revealed that due to business differences with Anees and also due to the fact that gold smuggling became less lucrative,he quit gold smuggling. To convert the wealth acquired from criminal activities into white money,he started a sale/purchase business of second-hand cars. Mann said it was not long before Dev Behl again ventured into criminal activities and started operating a drug racket in the year 2000. Just like his gold smuggling,the scale of the drug racket too was huge and Dev Behl obtained precursor chemicals like ephedrine,pseudoephedrine,ketamine etc. in huge quantities and manufactured synthetic drugs like ICE on a large scale.

Mann said that according to preliminary estimates,Dev Behl and his associates obtained at least 1500 kg of precursor chemicals and converted them into synthetic drugs like ICE at factories in Himachal Pradesh and other places,and,smuggled them to Canada. Dev Behl generally preferred handling large consignments. In 2004,he obtained 700 kg of pseudoephedrine from Hyderabad,manufactured ICE from it and pumped the synthetic drug into the international market,Mann said.

The SSP said investigations have revealed that recently Dev Behl was working on one of his largest orders so far — supply of 300 kg of ICE to be routed through Nairobi,Kenya — a single contraband consignment that was worth Rs.1500 crore in the international market. However,his luck ran out and he was nabbed by the police before this consignment could be prepared fully and delivered.